The San Bruno Park School district held it’s monthly board meeting at district headquarters on Acacia avenue Wednesday January 13, 2010. The board reconvened after the holiday season and the meeting was well attended.
The Brown Act
A presentation regarding the Brown act was made to the board by Lisa Mori. The Brown act is California state legislation written by assemblymember Ralph Brown that was passed in 1953. The act guarantees the public’s right to attend and participate in meetings of the local legislative bodies. A full review of the Brown Act in it’s entirety can be found HERE.
Critics of the Brown Act contend that it still lacks enforcement and that the law has been eroded by court decisions and Government’s attempts to block records. From a high level it pertains to the school board in that all meetings must be open to the public, except for authorized closed meetings outlined within the scope of the Brown Act itself. As the SBPSD board is a five member board, it is prohibited from having more than two (2) members together to hear, discuss or deliberate upon any item that is within the subject matter jurisdiction of the Board or district. Serial meetings (direct communication, technical devices such as email or fax and personal intermediaries) cannot be used by the majority of board members to discuss subject matter within the jurisdation of the board and is prohibited. It should be noted that meetings do not include individual contact, public conference, local agency meetings, community meetings or social gatherings.
School Finance 101 Part three.
The continuing series presented by the superintendent and the chief business officer of the board to educate and inform on the basics of how the schools are funded. Tonight’s lesson covered local revenue streams. This series is informative and a must watch to those not familiar with how school districts are financed. Next month the topics shift from revenues to expenditures and represents the fourth installment in the seven part series. This is good stuff, and the district is working on posting the slides on the SBPSD website.
The boards action items included:
Acceptance of the fiscal year 2008-09 audit report. Government requirements mandate that a 3rd party audit must be performed on the boards accounting practices and submitting to Sacramento. There was a line item mistype that was found and corrected as part of the audit, but for the most part the audit was clean.
The deposit of interest earned on funds derived from sale of surplus of real property, the adoption of resolution 10-01-01. Presented by superintedent Hutt, the interest accrued from the fund 40 (sale of the Sandberg site) was recommended to be moved and allocated for operational expenditures. There was a discussion regarding the California deferred maintenance funds and matching funds for infrastructure improvements. There were a couple of things here that I’m working on getting clarification for. Firstly, the maintenance funds through the state are scheduled to be discontinued in Feb/March of this year. Secondly, with regards to matching funds from the state for the Parkside rennovations. The board has not applied or is not eligible for matching funds, but there has been discussion in several meetings as to whether or not they should be. To this, there is currently 1.5 billion dollars in approved state projects for education, with no funding and no bond measures. Again, I’m waiting on further clarification on the agenda items.
Establish budget guidelines and proposed budget calendar for 2010-11. There will be a further study session on January 20th at 7:00pm (tentative) to discuss the legislative changes that affect the budget.
Governing Board Committee Assignments – Passed.
Determination of District Summer School programs. Brought up in January to ensure facilities and personnell scheduling for summer school. Summer school was approved at Allen school from 6/19 to 08/13. This is later in the summer to make the transition to the school year easier on the summer school students.
To clarify a few things:
1)The deferred maintenance match is not being discontinued in Feb/March. This isn’t a huge amount, and is based on a set formula. For SBPSD, it was typically about $100,000.
2)When the gentleman mentioned a program being cut, it was the hardship or emergency match program (also part of deferred maintenance) that he was referring to. On eligible projects, this would pay higher amounts, on a case by case basis.